


who could ever leave me, darling?

by TheEagleGirl



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, game of thrones
Genre: Gen, Sansa is Queen, being queen is lonely, but you can choose to be happy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-29
Updated: 2020-03-29
Packaged: 2021-02-28 18:46:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,474
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23371894
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheEagleGirl/pseuds/TheEagleGirl
Summary: She lifts the crown off her head with shaking fingers. She wonders how Robb felt when he was crowned, if he was as scared as she was. If he felt alone in a room of people as she has for years, as she still does.Sansa wonders how well he wore the crown, if it hurt after a day of wearing it for so long.~Sansa is queen. It does not change the fact that she is also alone.
Comments: 21
Kudos: 82





	who could ever leave me, darling?

**Author's Note:**

  * For [grey_cat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/grey_cat/gifts).



> This fic is for Rayen (@bubbiikins on twitter, go follow him!) who generously donated money to coronavirus relief efforts and commissioned this fic from me. Rayen, you're awesome.

After her coronation and the feast, and after Sansa is escorted back to her chambers, it only takes a few minutes for the loneliness to set in. She is, after all, alone here—Arya has gone off to the west, Bran to the South and Jon up North. 

After being surrounded by her siblings for the past year, it feels _wrong_ without someone to turn to, without someone to confide in and trust. She misses them, like the sudden ache of an absent limb. Sansa wishes they could have stayed.

She has wanted this. She _wanted_ to be a queen, ever since she was a little girl. Now that she was here—

It just doesn’t feel like she’d thought it would. The men who’d celebrated her crowning, who’d celebrated at the feast—who were _still_ down there, she could hear them through the walls—they were celebrating the North’s freedom. As was she. _As was she._ But Sansa felt strangely apart from them. She could not very well go down to the great hall and sing at the top of her lungs with Lord Forrester. She could not laugh and drink at the low tables with them. Sansa was here instead, in her parents old bedchambers, dressed in finery and _alone_.

She lifts the crown off her head with shaking fingers. She wonders how Robb felt when he was crowned, if he was as scared as she was. If he felt alone in a room of people as she has for years, as she still does. Sansa wonders how well he wore the crown, if it hurt after a day of wearing it for so long. 

Slowly, Sansa undoes her laces, and the weirwood dress drops to her feet after a few minutes. Her corset is next, and then her stockings, till she is left only in her shift. Her maids had been at the revelry below, and she hadn’t wanted to take them away from the celebration, but she doesn’t mind undressing herself. It gives her something to do, to take her mind off the way she's feeling. 

When she is done, she stands in front of her mirror, with just her shift on. In the waxy glass, she can make out the red of her hair, the paleness of her face. 

“Do I look like a queen?” Sansa asks, touching the mirror, as if it will answer. Did she even know what a real queen looked like? Cersei was beautiful, but cruel. Daenerys was more a warrior than a queen, in britches and capes and on dragonback half the time Sansa had known her. Neither of them had sat down and dealt with the ruling of a country in the time Sansa had known them. Neither of them wore a crown well.

“I must be a better queen,” Sansa whispers, alone in her room. The words fall from her lips into the still air, a promise. “For my people.”

Her sleep that night is fitful. She thinks she won’t sleep easily for a long time.

  
  


When she was younger, Queen Cersei had told Sansa that as a woman, she has two weapons: tears, and what lay between her legs. She’s determined to use neither, as Queen in the North. She comes to her first day of council sessions determined to be _logical_ and just, and well-informed. Queen Sansa the Rational is perhaps not the most exciting of epithets, but she would be known as calculated and fair rather than mad.

 _This will be a productive council session,_ Sansa tells herself, clutching her skirts as she makes to sit. _This will set the tone for my reign._

For a few minutes, it goes well. Lord Reed begins by telling her of the efforts to rebuild several villages that had been overrun by the dead army, and Lord Manderly reports on the navy he’s begun to build. It is only when Sansa begins to relax that Lord Torrhen Hornwood ruins it with the first question out of his mouth: “And on the subject of a _king,_ Your Grace?”

Immediately, the chamber goes still. Sansa can feel the flush beginning in her chest. She ignores it, but knows that in a minute, her cheeks will be stained scarlet with embarrassment. “What of it?” she manages, in a cool voice.

Under the ice of her glare, Lord Hornwood shrivels a bit. Still, he marches on. “When do you plan on taking a king?”

Sansa presses her lips together. “Not at this time. I’ve a country to get in order before I will even think on it.” She looks around the table. “Maester Wolkan, has there been a raven from my brother Bran?”

She spends the rest of the session as frozen as marble, but for the twisting of her dress beneath the table and the flush of anger on her cheeks.

  
  
  


It is over three moons of her reign when Sansa has a moment to herself to _think_ about why she is so miserable. The North was rebuilding. They were beginning to trade lumber, and the new fleet was flourishing. Sansa was working harder than she ever had, and seeing _results._ She should have, by all rights, been happy.

She comes to the realization soon after she watches one of her lords throw and arm around his friend during a feast. She is miserable because she has no one to share this with.

There was a wall around her, impenetrable and cold. Sansa has been, in her life, accustomed to being alone even when surrounded by others, but she did not expect it _here,_ in the home she grew up in. It stings more than she realized it would, to be alone once more.

 _Tear the wall down,_ Sansa tells herself that night, after she has gone to bed. _Tear it all down and begin anew. Build a fortress around yourself, but leave a door for people to enter._

_No one can do this alone._

The next morning, Sansa summons Alys Karstark and Serenna Flint, the first of her ladies in waiting. She sends another letter further South, and tells what’s left of the Faith to send her a Septa for company, and adds that although she does not worship the Seven anymore, she could use someone to practice embroidery with. 

Sansa is _safe._ She is home, and she is helping her people. She will _not_ be alone unless she allows herself to be. A fortnight later, Alys Karstark arrives with her trunk of things, her strange wildling husband behind her, and Sansa can feel a bit of the tension loosen.

Slowly, she surrounds herself with the laughter and wit of women, and she feels herself become comfortable once more. 

  
  
  


“You realize that Lord Hornwood keeps bringing up ‘finding a suitable husband’ because he hopes you’ll choose _him,”_ Alys says archly, and promptly stabs herself with a needle. “Ow!”

Septa Aline laughs, in her quiet, serious way. “My mother always said that if you stabbed yourself during embroidery, whatever you just said is true.”

Alys glares. “It’s true! He’s always following Sansa around like a lost puppy, begging for scraps. Did you see him attempt to woo her with _poetry_ the other day? He thought it was a good idea to rhyme ‘eyes of blue’ with ‘wolves on her shoe’.” She waves her needle through the air. “That man lacks a proper imagination, and his vocabulary could use some work.”

Sansa ducks her head, trying not to laugh. “That’s unkind, Alys,” she says. “Besides, we can hardly tell him to work on his vocabulary when he’s so busy trying to marry me. He’ll never have time for anything else.”

Grinning, Alys puts down her embroidery and stretches. She pats her belly. “The little monster in here keeps kicking,” she says. “If I have your leave, Your Grace, I’d like to go walk. Perhaps the glass gardens are empty.”

Serenna finishes a stitch, and says, without looking up, “You just don’t want to finish your embroidery. Your baby will have plain, undecorated clothes if you keep this up.”

Alys grins down at Serenna, “That’s not true, not with you embroidering up a storm. You think I haven’t noticed the baby clothes you’ve been making?”

Serenna squacks in offense, and as she and Alys squabble, Septa Aline turns to Sansa. “Perhaps a walk would do us all some good? Especially after your long council session this morning.”

Sansa finds that she is smiling when she looks up from her work. “That sounds lovely.”

On the way down, with Serenna complaining and Septa Aline pretending to disapprove of Alys’s baudy jokes, Sansa realizes that she is happier than she’s been in years. Her fortress’s walls are high, but the people inside with her make it less a prison and more a home.

Laughing, they step out into the sunlight.

**Author's Note:**

> If you enjoyed this fic, please leave a comment/kudos! It means a lot ❤️


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